Something better than Synctoy?

[Thready]

Hey guys Im a photographer and I have 800+ GB of photography mirrored on 3 HDDs and an external HDD. 

 

I use Synctoy every night but Synctoy is a cumbersome and manual process. Is there a solution to create a sort of RAID 1 type solution just for my photography folder? Not actual RAID 1 but something that automatically mirrors the folder onto my other 2 internal drives? I wouldn't need it mirrored on my external if that's a problem.

 

I'm looking to automate for convenience and security. My fear is, what if I'm editing photos and my drive crashes before I get a chance to mirror it that night?

 

Thanks

[RayLeech]

I use Syncovery for a lot of things, not just my photo library. It supports both automatic, scheduled and manual jobs. It can simultaneously copy to multiple destinations (e.g., both of my NAS units concurrently).

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You can set up FreeFileSync (FFS) to "mirror" (not the same as RAID 1) a drive to another drive inside the computer either by manually telling it to do so or setting it up to automatially do so on a schedule. However, if that is your only backup, I do not recommend it. Anything that happens on your main drive--malware infection, accidental deletion, data corruption, etc.--will also show up on your mirror drive.

 

You can, however use FreeFileSync to "mirror" your data to external backup drives. Once you set up a profile to tell FFS what to when you select it, all you need to do is to power up and connect your external drive (a backup drive must be kept powered down, disconnected, and stored out of sight of the computer except while updating it to ensure the maximum protection reasonably possible), then open FFS, select the profile, and start the process. It can literally take less than a minute to start the process, after which you just ignore it while it does it's own thing.

 

You are absolutely correct to worry about data getting lost before it can be backed up. I have the same worry which is why I immediately backup any important data that I can't easily replace otherwise. Again, using FFS, it takes very little time to do so. I may go days without backing up my computer(s) because I haven't added or changed any important data, then, in one day, work on a project and update my backups several times during the day while working on the project. Digging out the backup drives and connecting them is a bit annoying, even though it only takes a couple of mintes or less) but is nowhere even remotely as inconvenient and unreliable (and, potentially, expensive) as data recovery. I'm not saying you shouldn't have "mirror" drives inside your computer--they will further reduce the chance of data loss due to a drive failure when used in addition to external backup drives--but it's still imperative that you backup your data to external drives ASAP.